Aleister Crowley,
the Great Beast

Aleister Crowley was born October 12th, 1875
at 36 Clarendon Square, Leamington, Warwickshire, England as
Edward Alexander Crowley
into a wealthy and religious family at the height of the
Victorian era.
Crowley despised and rebelled against his family at every
turn, even renaming himself 'Aleister' to avoid sharing the same
first name as his father, who passed away when Crowley was 11.

Like many naughty young boys, Aleister entertained himself through
several activities, notably creating a "homemade firework" with
which he nearly killed himself, as well as torturing a cat in
several horrible ways to test the "nine lives" theory. He
dispensed of his virginity at age 14 with the help of a maid. At
17, he contracted gonorrhea with the help of a street walker.

Crowley went on to attend Cambridge University, where he apparently studied alpine climbing, living in the
manner of the privileged aristocracy and having a great deal of sex
with both men and women. He also began working in the Diplomatic
Service, but as Crowley himself said "the fame of an ambassador
rarely outlives a century", and Crowley wished to make a greater
imprint on the world.

The Golden Dawn's contribution to the Western Magical Tradition is
definitely worth noting, because it was their synthesis of the
Kabbalah, alchemy, tarot, astrology, divination, numerology,
Masonic symbolism, and ritual magic into one coherent and logical
system which led them to influence countless occult organizations
to come. Mathers adapted the system of magic outlined by
Eliphas Levi,
and through Levi, the spiritual ancestry of the Golden Dawn was
traced to the Rosicrucian Brotherhood
and from there, through the Kabbalah to
Ancient Egypt.
Mathers' authority was held in part by his link to the "Secret Chiefs", the
"true leaders" of the Order, with whom Mathers could
communicate with only through metaphysical means.

Adopting the magical name Frater 'Perdurabo', Latin for "I Will
Endure", Crowley advanced quickly through the ranks of the Golden
Dawn, initially studying under
Alan Bennett,
who was Mathers' spiritual heir. Bennett left England in 1899 for health reasons, moving to Ceylon, what it now Sri Lanka,
where he joined a
buddhist
monastery. Unfortunately, Crowley,
left to his own devices, managed to severely fragment the order
through sheer force of personality. In 1900, he completed the studies necessary in order to obtain the rank of Adeptus Minor, however the London controllers of the Order, disapproving of Crowley's homosexual dabblings, refused to advance him. Crowley travelled to Paris,
where Mathers himself performed the ceremony, which only served to further outrage the London members.

The ensuing uproar caused several of the London members to resign,
and Mathers was eventually expelled from the Order, specifically on the
grounds that he had put its authority into jeopardy by revealing his suspicions that the founding documents linking them to an older occult order in Germany had been forged by another member (which they had been). Crowley attempted to obtain possession of the Order's property on behalf of Mathers, interrupting one of their rituals in full Highland regalia, wearing a black hood. As with any serious dispute between occultists, astral attacks ensued. Crowley reported that the rebels directed hostile magic against him as evidenced by the fact that his rubber raincoat burst spontaneously into flames and he found himself in a "furious temper" for no reason, so extreme that horses ran away in fear at the sight of him. In the end, however, it was the police who resolved the matter.

Crowley was expelled from the Golden Dawn, only 2 years after joining,
chiefly through the efforts of
William Butler Yeats,
who reportedly did not approve of Crowley's magical methods.

Crowley, understandably tired of all the fighting, chose to
travel the world, visiting
Mexico,
India,
France,
Ceylon, where he reunited with Alan Bennett
and studied
Yoga.
He also married
Rose Kelly,
later revealed to be clairvoyant, travelling with her to
Egypt.

In fact it was in Egypt,
in March of 1904, that Crowley had the most important experience of his life. Crowley had been trying for several years to contact his
Holy Guardian Angel
using the methods described in
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
with no success. However it was in
Cairo
that Crowley finally encountered an entity known as
Aiwass,
whom Crowley believed was his Holy Guardian Angel.

According to Crowley's own account, while (unsuccessfully) trying to summon sylphs for his wife's amusement, she began to receive a very
powerful psychic message from the
Ancient Egyptian god
Horus.

Skeptical of his wife's sudden clairvoyancy, Crowley demanded answers to a series of questions from her, of which she had no possible prior knowledge. Upon answering all things correctly, he took her to a museum, and after passing several images of Horus (which the still skeptical Crowley reports, he "noted with silent glee"), she pointed across the room to a stele which could not be clearly seen from where they stood. When they examined the stele (now referred to as the
Stele of Revealing,
it was painted with the image of Horus, and to Crowley's further conviction, it was labelled as item number
666
in the museum catalog.

Crowley had himself adopted
666
as his
personal moniker in rebellion to his religious upbringing many
years before. After invoking Horus, Crowley made his fateful breakthrough. For three days Crowley took dictation from the entity identifying itself as Aiwass, the resulting text,
Liber AL vel Legis, became what is now known as
The Book of the Law.

This book was to become the central core of Crowley's philosophy.
Crowley was named the Prophet of a New Aeon which would end the Age of
Osiris and usher in the Age of Horus,
a signal that a new era had begun for mankind, and that the old religions were to be swept aside.

The 3 key philosophical ideas outlined in the book are:

Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law

Love Is The Law, Love Under Will

Every Man And Every Woman Is A Star

Interpretation of what "Do What Thou Wilt..." in contemporary
times seems to have deteriorated into "do whatever you want...",
however it seems clear that the meaning was more along the lines
of 'doing that which your higher self dictates'. The higher self,
or "Will" is present in all of enlightened people. In order to
follow your "Will", one must know oneself. And self
knowledge is the central basis of most successful philosophies.

After the encounter with Aiwass, in typical grandiose fashion, Mathers received a letter announcing that the Equinox of the Gods
had come, and that Crowley had forged a new link with the Secret
Chiefs, thus making him the supreme magical authority. This naturally
resulted in a magical duel, which Crowley seems to have eventually won.

According to Crowley, Mathers reportedly sent
one of his followers, a vampire, to him. She appeared to him in the guise of a "young woman of bewitching beauty", but was able to defeat her, and she was "transformed into hag of sixty, bent and decrepit". Mathers then sent a "current of evil" which struck Crowley's bloodhounds dead and caused his servants to fall ill. Crowley retaliated by summoning up the forces of the demon Beelzebub
and his 49 attendant fiends. Following this
effort, Mathers' magical assaults on Crowley ceased. Years later,
when Mathers passed away of influenza, many felt that Crowley had murdered him with magic.

It is not clear why shortly after his encounter with Aiwass and his battle with Mathers, Crowley
seems to have lost interest in things magical for several years. In 1905, he was part of an ill-fated expedition to climb a Himalayan mountain peak, in which several members of the party died. He spent several years travelling through China,
Canada and the United States,
with and without his wife and child. It was not until his return from the United States that he found out that his daughter Lola Zaza had died from typhus in
Rangoon, India.

In 1907, Crowley formed the
Argenteum Astrum,
the Order of the Silver Star, a magical organization centered
around his re-discovered
Book of the Law manuscript. In 1909 he began publishing the Equinox, a biannual publication arriving on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the official organ of the A:. A:., the majority of the writing contributed by Crowley himself.

In 1909, Crowley divorced his wife, on the grounds of her
alcoholism. The divorce enabled Crowley to indulge in his passions for magick, drugs, and women unchecked by the constraints of married life.

It might be interesting to note at this point that Crowley
believed himself to be the reincarnation of the occultist Eliphas Levi
who died the same year that Crowley was born. He had also determined that his past lives had included
Count Cagliostro,
an 18th century occultist, founder of 'Egyptian Rite Masonry',
Alexander VI, the notorious
Borgia
Pope, and Edward Kelley
(who along with John Dee
were the
Elizabethan court magicians who invented, err, deciphered
Enochian, the language of the angels.)

In 1910, Crowley was contacted by the head of a German magical
order known as the Ordo Templi Orientis,
often referred to as the OTO,
(alternately translated as either "the Order of the Templars of
the East" and "the Order of the Temple of the Orient" in a variety
of sources.) The OTO accused Crowley of having published the secret of their IXth degree. Crowley was mystified until a conversation
revealed that a passage he published led the OTO to assume that
Crowley was involved in sex magick which they used in their
rituals. He join the order shortly thereafter, and in 1912, became
the head of the English speaking branch of the Order.

In 1916, while living near Bristol, New Hampshire
Crowley promoted himself to the rank of Magus through a ceremony of his own devising. According to
Richard Cavendish,
in
History of Magic
and
The Powers of Evil in Western Religion, Magic, and Folk Belief
(both currently out of print), this involved baptizing a toad
as Jesus of Nazareth, then crucifying it. I've been chided
by several acquaintances who are involved with the OTO for
citing this "utter fabrication".

Crowley waited out the first World War
in the United States, publishing a fair amount of Anti-British propaganda. He later claimed that the
writing done supporting the German side was done satirically,
however this did little to improve his already festering public
image.

After the war, Crowley had a daughter, Poupee, with Leah Hirsig (AKA The Scarlet Woman),
and in 1920 he set up the notorious Abbey of Thelema in
Sicily.

The Abbey, however, was an "unsanitary hovel". Crowley's addiction to
both heroin and cocaine raged out of control. The Abbey was the setting for
Diary of a Drug Fiend,
Crowley's hopeful novel about a couple struggling to free
themselves of their drug addiction. Sadly, the truth was much more
grim. Poupee died there, while Crowley was travelling between
London, Paris and the Abbey. It was when one of the Crowley's
undergraduates Raoul Loveday died from drinking impure water, that the Abbey's fate was finally sealed. Loveday's wife Betty May went back to England and sold her story to the London tabloid newspaper
The Sunday Express.

The papers were filled with reports of black magic rituals and
other scandalous acts allegedly performed at the Abbey. These
reports came during the same time as the rise of the
Mussolini
regime and Crowley was quickly expelled from Sicily in 1923.

In 1955,
Kenneth Anger
shot the documentary
Thelema Abbey at the Abbey, which had been exorcised after Crowley's departure, painstakingly exposing the whitewashed walls to reveal paintings and other physical evidence of Crowley's occult activities.

After his expulsion from Italy, Crowley's life took a turn for the worse. His reputation as "The Wickedest Man In The World" was now
more than ever playing against him. Unable to find a reliable publisher
for his writing, or for that matter, a reliable place of residence, he
spent the remaining years as a wanderer, still addicted to heroin,
desperately in need of both disciples and money.

Aleister Crowley died December 1st, 1947 at age 72. His last words are often reported to be "I am perplexed", though since he died alone, this is patently false.

The man who put the 'k' in Magick

There seems to be some confusion as to Crowley's spelling of the
word magic. According to Cavendish, the addition of the letter
'k' by Crowley represented the sexual aspects of his magical
studies, the letter 'k' being the first letter of
kteis
which is the Greek word for female genitalia. However I have been
told that reasons for the spelling change were purely
numerological by a member of the OTO. Either
reason seems likely and acceptable. What is not acceptable is the
profusion of words mispelled in some sort of pseudo-appropriation
of the power of the word magick. I have noticed several writers
freely using the word 'magickian', which I am willing to tolerate.
A reprehensible abuse of this is certainly 'astrologickal' which
I believe was repeatedly used in a book published by Llewellyn.

Thelema

Thelema
is Greek for "The Will". Crowley used the word Thelema to
represent his most important concept, the statement "Do As Thou
Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law". Crowley's entire religion,
(Crowleyanity as it sometimes referred to by some cynical authors)
liberally mixes elements of Christianity,
Gnosticism
and the
Masons into its magickal rituals. It's hard to conceive how
mildly Crowley and his followers would have been received
if they were judged according to our contemporary standards. Thelemites, those who follow the laws of Thelema, often greet one another with the
shorthand "93", which is the numerical value of the phrase "Love
Is The Law, Love Under Will", the proper response to the "Do As
Thou Wilt..." phrase.

Subcultural Relevance

Aleister Crowley may seem, to the uninitiated, like an unmitigated egomaniac, a charlatan, a mad man, or worse. It can be argued, even by occultists, that this was indeed the case. However as
occultist, Crowley remains unparalleled. How many contemporary
practitioners can actually claim to have manifested a lasting change on
the world. After all, changing the world around you is what magic
is all about, and Aleister Crowley did it better than anyone. To
say that Crowley was ahead of his time would be an understatement.
Aside from the glamour of his "wickedness" which will always have a
certain appeal, his greatest gift was perhaps his ability to
reshape the theory of magic from a modern psychological standpoint,
refashioning it into a tool for the New Aeon, a contribution that
has yet to be matched or exceeded.

Other Sources for Aleister Crowley

It is my will to visit:

The University of Texas, as part of their 20th century manuscript archives
in the Harry Ransom Center, has the largest single collection of original Crowley manuscripts, letters, and related documents in the world. All that is required to examine any documents in these collections is a valid state or government issued ID.
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/crowley_aleister.html

A link to alternatives.com, over 2 gigs of free archival material on a variety of subjects, including magick, Crowley, etc. Sources include usenet etc. Look under 'religion' to get into the magick archives.

The official internet site for the Ordo Templi Orientis Indexes all the lodges and oases across the country!http://www.otohq.org

A huge archive of articles published about Crowley... A great resource! http://www.broon.demon.co.uk/media/crowley.htm

A large selection of links devoted to all things Satanic...Check your soul in at the door. Includes some Crowley stuff.
http://www.users.wineasy.se/stefanh/satan.htm